In her mild demeanor and her obvious passion for coffee and community, Christine Herman Rusell embodies the qualities of Case Study Coffee that have seen the business grow from a single espresso cart in 2005 to a soon-to-be three-location coffee establishment in Portland, Oregon. She looks around the spacious downtown location, at the tables full of students chatting and business-people glaring at their laptops, and says, "I just try to choose great coffee and not mess it up, so I can make my baristas' lives easy."

Topics: roaster profile, coffee roaster, roaster, Successful business, sf1, woman roaster

Avoca Coffee was established three years ago in the historic Near Southside district of Fort Worth, TX, the project of childhood friends Garold LaRue and Jimmy Story. “I’m a fifth-generation coffee grower,” says Garold, “and at eighteen when I started working, I decided to become a barista. I’ve been in coffee ever since—seen part of the 2nd wave, the 3rd wave, and the birth of the new wave, whatever it is.” Living with his coffee-farming family in Nicaragua until 1985, when the family escaped the revolution to Fort Worth, Garold has a unique perspective on coffee.

Topics: roaster profile, SF25, coffee roaster, commercial coffee roaster, roaster, sf1

Topics: roaster profile, SF25, roaster, Successful business

Yesterday, Rise Up Coffee in Maryland celebrated its 9th birthday with the arrival of a San Franciscan SF75. As the roaster took its epic journey from Fallon, Nevada, to Easton, Maryland, we at The San Franciscan Roaster got the chance to write about our interview with owner Tim Cureton about coffee, the Peace Corp, and opening a specialty coffee business in, of all places, Maryland!

Topics: roaster profile, SF25, coffee roaster, roaster, SF75

Know you need to use Twitter for your coffee roasting company but don’t know how? Or, have you started using it without success? Social media drives the coffee industry more and more; frustrating or overwhelming it might be, but very few coffee businesses can thrive now without online engagement.

Topics: coffee roaster, Successful business, 101, Social Media, twitter